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Abstract

In the recent years, employee engagement has become a hot topic of discussion among popular business press and consulting firms. This topic has created interest in various stakeholder groups ranging from scholarly human resource practitioners to policy makers or government agencies. The interest in employee engagement has progressively increased, however, in academic literature: the concept of employee engagement has been studied rarely and comparatively less is known regarding its antecedents and consequences. Recently, a number of researchers have argued that the challenge of engaging the employees is mounting. Although it seems to conceptually overlap with existing constructs, for instance, job involvement, organizational commitment, still some empirical research confirms that engagement is a separate construct. Therefore, this chapter aims (a) to shed some light in this respect by assessing the association between workforce diversity, specifically in terms of their age and employee engagement, and (b) to provide a variety of precursors and outcomes of employee engagement.

Introduction

The notion of employee engagement is a relatively new one, one that has been heavily marketed by human resource (HR) consulting firms that offer advice on how it can be created and leveraged. (Macey & Schneider, 2008, p. 3)

In the recent years, employee engagement has become a hot topic of discussion among popular business press and consulting firms (Anaza et al., 2016). This topic has created interest in various stakeholder groups ranging from scholarly (e.g.Kahn, 1990; Schaufeli et al., 2006, 2002), Human resource practitioners (e.g. Harter et al., 2002; Masson et al., 2008), to policy-makers or government agencies (e.g.MacLeod & Clarke 2009). On the one hand, the interest in employee engagement has progressively increased (Anaza et al., 2016), however in academic literature, the concept of employee engagement has been studied rarely and comparatively less is known regarding its antecedents and consequences. Recently, a number of researchers’ have argued that the challenge of engaging the employees is mounting (Fleming et al., 2005; May et al., 2004; Pech & Slade, 2006). Although it seeming conceptually overlap with existing constructs for instance job involvement, organizational commitment, still some empirical research confirms that engagement is a separate construct (Hallberg & Schaufeli, 2006).

As per a survey of 656 CEOs hailing from the countries across the globe, employee engagement is fourth significant management challenge, following reducing costs, creating loyal customers (Wah, 1999). Indeed, the Gallup Organization found recently that approximately twenty percent of US employees were disengaged and fifty four percent were successfully impartial regarding their work (Fleming et al., 2005). In addition, study conduct by Gallup and Towers Perrin (Seijts & Crim, 2006) advocates that disengage employee is equally challenging in other countries also. Thus, collectively the influence of these two trends - diversity in workforce and the rising challenge of employee engagement could prove problematical for various employers (Avery et al., 2007).The work force diversity will increase the chances of different diversity present in most of the work settings.